La construcción del “otro turco”: la batalla de Nicópolis y el cautiverio de Johannes Schiltberger

Abstract

The Battle of Nicopolis (1396) not only meant a severe defeat for the crusader coalition in its war against an expanding Ottoman Empire, it was also the starting point of a new narrative in the construction of the «Turkish other». This article analyzes the transformation of the traditional narrative about the Muslim enemy in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, to a new one centered on the Turk. Within this context I will pay special attention to the Johannes Schiltbergers’ Reisebuch, written after the captivity that followed his participation in Nicopolis.